Speaking to Sky News, Mr Gardiner said: "There are those people in the UK who would like to see us leave membership of the European Union but retain membership of the EEA, the European Economic Area.

"Now, I don’t subscribe to that because I think most of the political reasons that people wanted to leave the European Union would actually not be achieved by doing that.

"We will not be members of the single market. We have to negotiate a free trade agreement with Europe, where we can negotiate the sort of customs arrangement we want, hopefully as friction-free as possible."

He then laid into Brussels negotiators for making the issue of a free trade deal a political battle, after his Conservative counterpart Liam Fox said such a deal would be easy to strike.

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Labour's Shadow International Trade Secretary also contradicted his own leader

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Gardiner laid into Brussels negotiators for making the issue of a free trade deal a political battle

We will not be members of the single market

Barry Gardiner

The Labour MP said: "I agree with Fox. It should be a very easy deal to do. Unless politics gets in the way and the EU have their own political reasons to make that difficult.

"The EU wants to make it clear to the members of the 27 that they should not leave like the UK because they’d be worse off. Brussels has political objectives in this.

"We should not be naive. They want to maintain the European project. So we have to be clear on our outcomes."